Ellis creates work in which audiences are drawn to challenge their own conceptions of their position in the world, most recently focussing on the institutions that bind us together. Ellis aims to test himself within these environments by finding the limits of the institutions he himself is a part of, criticising their functions and methodologies and translating his experience as an individual onto prospective audiences. His institutionally critical works have more recently explored the university context of his student years, particularly examining financial, historical and intellectual legacies and the ways in which contextualising them in new settings can provide a space for considering new intersectional thought and voices, especially in environments in which these voices would previously have been denied.